Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Was Japan Totalitarian?

Totalitarian is defined as of or relating to a type of government that is centralized and dictorial and requires complete subservience to the state. Japan, like Russia and Italy, instituted secret police except they were a little more open about it. If you opposed the government you were thrown in jail for 30 + years. This seems as though they are requiring the people to be completely subservient. The government was militaristic by the time world war two came around with its main objective being to strengthen its navy and military. The people began to scaepgoat the politicians and put their faith in the military who was strengthening the hope and bringing honor to the country. Despite treaties signed with America and UK, Japan strengthened their army and began to couquer parts of CHina and Korea. Thus demonstrating their clear objective of trying to become like the dominant western powers. With such a strong military and successfully conquering nearby nations, it is no wonder that the people were subservient, however because the government was not explicitly dictorial and centralized Japan was not completely totalitarian.

1 comment:

  1. You mentioned that if someone opposed the government, they were thrown into jail for a very long time. Even in close to perfect nations, there are people who opposed the government and during the times of the depression, i'm sure there were even more people who were not happy with the way their country was being run. Inevitably, there would have been a lot of people acting out or rebelling against the government so i was wondering if the government ever had any serious problems controlling these people or if there was any problems with increasingly crowded jails or anything like that. do you know anything about any of that?

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